Editing Reputation (section)

=== Image ===
'''Image''' is a global or averaged evaluation of a given target on the part of an agent. It consists of (a set of) social evaluations about the characteristics of the target. Image as an object of communication is what is exchanged in examples 1 and 2, above. In the second case, we call it third-party image. It may concern a subset of the target's characteristics, i.e., its willingness to comply with socially accepted norms and customs, or its [[skills]] (ways), or its definition as pertaining to a precise agent. Indeed, we can define special cases of image, including third-party image, the evaluation that an agent believes a third party has of the target, or even shared image, that is, an evaluation shared by a [[Social group|group]]. Not even this last is reputation, since it tries to define too precisely the mental status of the group.

'''Reputation''', as distinct from image, is the process and the effect of transmitting a target image. We call reputation transmission a communication of an evaluation without the specification of the evaluator, if not for a group attribution, and only in the default sense discussed before. This covers the case of example 3 above. More precisely, reputation is a believed, social, meta-evaluation; it is built upon three distinct but interrelated objects :
# a cognitive representation, or more precisely a believed evaluation – this could be somebody's image, but is enough that this consist of a communicated evaluation;
# a population object, i.e., a propagating believed evaluation; and
# an objective emergent property at the agent level, i.e., what the agent is believed to be.

In fact, reputation is a highly dynamic [[phenomenon]] in two distinct senses: it is subject to change, especially as an effect of corruption, errors, [[deception]], etc.; and it emerges as an effect of a multi-level bidirectional process. Reputation is also how others know and perceive you as an individual.

While ''image'' only moves (when transmitted and accepted) from one individual cognition to another, the [[Anonymity|anonymous]] character of reputation makes it a more complex phenomenon. Reputation proceeds from the level of individual cognition (when is born, possibly as an image, but not always) to the level of social propagation (at this level, it not necessarily believed as from any specific agent) and from this level back to individual cognition again (when it is accepted).

Moreover, once it gets to the population level, reputation gives rise to a further property at the agent level. It is both what people think about targets and what targets are in the eyes of others. From the very moment an agent is targeted by the [[community]], his or her life will change whether he or she wants it or not or believes it or not. Reputation has become the immaterial, more powerful equivalent of a [[Scarlet Letter (disambiguation)|scarlet letter]] sewed to one's clothes. It is more powerful because it may not even be perceived by the individual to whom it sticks, and consequently it is out of the individual's power to control and manipulate.

More simply speaking for those who want a working [[definition]] of reputation, reputation is the [[:wikt:sum|sum]] of impressions held by a [[company]]'s [[stakeholder (corporate)|stakeholder]]s. In other words, reputation is in the "eyes of the beholder". It need not be just a company's reputation but could be the reputation of an individual, country, [[brand]], [[political party]], [[Industry (economics)|industry]]. But the key point in reputation is not what the [[leadership]] insists but what others perceive it to be. For a company, its reputation is how esteemed it is in the eyes of its [[employee]]s, [[customer]]s, [[investor]]s, [[skilled worker|talent]], [[wikt:prospective|prospective]] candidates, [[competitor]]s, [[industry analyst|analyst]]s, [[alumni]], [[Regulatory agency|regulators]] and the list goes on.